The elegant building at 46 Beacon Street, now under contention, would make the perfect governor’s mansion.

Massachusetts is one of the few states that does not have one. Gov. Maura Healey currently lives with her partner Joanna Lydgate and her two children in Lydgate’s Arlington home.

The vacant Boston building, which overlooks Boston Common on Beacon Hill, sits between the State House and Charles Street.

A governor living there could walk to work as well as have a place for meetings and entertaining visiting dignitaries, something she cannot do in Arlington.

The facility could be like the city-owned Parkman House up the street at 33 Beacon.

After kicking out the Parks Department, the late Boston Mayor Kevin White had the Parkman House refurbished. He turned it into a fine townhouse which White used for parties, meetings and the entertainment of distinguished guests who sometimes stayed overnight, as did White on occasion.

Once a lavish hangout for State House politicians and visiting celebrities — political or otherwise — the roomy 46 Beacon has been vacant for years.

Its demise as a political watering hole came about 50 years ago when it was bought by the Unification Church — known as the “Moonies” after the founder Sun Myung Moon.

Its current owners, James Keliher and Geoffrey Caraboolad of Mainsail Management, bought the building from the Moonies and plan to build eight residential units for sale.

The Boston Landmarks Commission wants to declare the interior of the building a historic landmark and halt the plan.

Before all of this, politicians like fabled Governor’s Councilor Patrick J. “Sonny” McDonough of Dorchester would hold court in the wood paneled bar and lounge of 46 Beacon. There were also well-furnished rooms for guests who stayed there.

Some visitors, like famous writer Norman Mailer, for instance, stayed there. The place had many stories. Here is one of them.

Back then, before a couple of councilors went to prison and the council was stripped of much of its power, the eight-member council had approval power over practically every gubernatorial appointee.

The council practically ran the government and McDonough ran the council. So, if you wanted to become a judge, or a banking commissioner, or wanted to influence a government action you had to first check in with Sonny.

One day I am at the State House Press Room, and I get a call from Danny Cole, McDonough’s all-around gopher. He wants me to meet him at the bar at 46 where he is drinking with “some writer from New York.”

He is drinking with Norman Mailer who is now famous for his World War II novel “The Naked and the Dead.”  Mailer is in town to testify before the Supreme Judicial on the banning of William Burrough’s “obscene novel” “Naked Lunch” by a Superior Court judge. He wants McDonough’s help to overturn the ban.

“Sonny can’t do much about that,” I say. “It’s before the court, not the State House.”

“I know that,” Danny says, “But Mailer doesn’t.”

So, I go down to 46 to meet Mailer who has obviously been drinking with Danny for some time.  I loved his book, and I am an admirer.

Only it does not go so well. “I hate reporters,” Mailer says when Danny tells him I work for the Boston Herald.

Angry, I say, “Well, Norman, that’s what you are, only richer.”

We go back and forth and it’s downhill from there. Mailer leaves in a huff. He leaves the check, too.

Then a man with glasses, a long black beard and a dazed look, wearing what appears to be a worn-out WWI army trench coat, enters the bar.

“He can’t come in here,” Danny says. “He’s a bum. Throw him out,” he instructs the bartender.

“Danny,” I say, “you can’t throw him out.  That’s Alan Ginsberg, the poet.  He’s with Mailer, probably here to testify with Mailer.”

“I don’t care who he is,” Danny says. “Throw him out.”

The bartender approaches Ginsberg and gently turns him around and shows him the way out.

My one-time hero Mailer is gone, the poet Ginsberg is gone, and I am left with my not so literate friend Danny.

Despite it all, and despite Danny, Ginsberg, Mailer, McDonough, me and the bartender, the SJC in July 1966 lifts the ban on “Naked Lunch.”

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com.

Governor Maura Healey at her office in the State House. (Matt Stone/Boston Herald)